African Music Essay Example

African Music

African Music. And musical instruments in a different environment cut off from the living traditions of their ancient culture and isolated from the ‘dominant’ culture of the ‘colons’ and the magic of those lost days could be recaptured and remembered more importantly not by snatches of half-remembered songs but through the African music tradition that has evolved.In social context, African music – the authentic African music – is little known. The music is strange, difficult and unattractive to a non-African listener and usually given no second chance. Music is a human invention and both African and non-African music have and contain the elements such as tone color and intensity however, it must be acknowledged that music plays a significant role in African communities as work songs, lullabies, battle songs, religious music, and so on (Cartey and Kilson, 2002).

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Generally speaking though, the African concept of music is totally different to the Western one concept. The complicated rhythms, responsive choral singing, and flattened or blue, notes found in work songs and church music reflect much of the African traditions. Combining sounds in a manner pleasing to the ear is not the traditional African musicians seek to do but to express life in all of its aspects through the medium of sound is their aim. By incorporating spoken language into the music, the African musician does not merely attempt to imitate nature by music, but reverses the procedure by taking natural sounds. This may result in cacophony to the uninitiated, but in fact each sound has a particular meaning and must be studied within the context of African life in order to be meaningful.African society gives music an important role. Every African individual from birth has music is an integral part of their lives. The African child takes an active role in music at a very early stage in life, making musical instruments by the age of three or four with musical games preparing them to participate in all areas of adult activity farming, to attending weddings and funerals and dances.An intimate union formed between man and art in Africa is so inherent in man that black Africa has no precise noun to define music. It amounts to a total communion that is shared by the whole community. African music is nearly always coupled with some other art such as poetry or dance and is one of the most revealing forms of expression of the black soul.There is a great deal of homogeneity in the music of this. African Music.

1 traditional African musical instruments used in making music are the Kudu,a wind instrument; a shaker, a percussion instrument and the zulu drum, a fixture in many African musical festivities taken from the Yahoo website images.

2 taken from the Yahoo Google maps are pictures of the African boundaries.